Pat Summitt is called the John Wooden of women’s basketball. That’s nice, but it sells her short.

Before Summitt, women might as well have been tossing balls into peach baskets. Now they are dunking on national TV.

It wasn’t all Summitt’s doing, but she’s as close to a female James Naismith as we’ll ever see. That’s why there is a sadness that transcends the basketball world.

Summitt announced Wednesday that she’s retiring as Tennessee’s coach. She was diagnosed last year with early-onset Alzheimer’s.

The disease simply won’t allow Summitt to perform her duties in the manner we have grown accustomed. She is becoming “coach emeritus,” which will allow her to advise new coach Holly Warlick and mentor players.

“I will continue to make them my passion,” Summitt said in a statement. “I love our players and my fellow coaches, and that’s not going to change.”

It’s easy to get carried away with somber goodbyes. But it’s almost impossible to overstate what Summitt has meant to her sport.

It’s as if some gender-conscious God looked around 40 years ago, hated what it saw and chose Summitt to lead women’s basketball out of the Peach Basket Age.

It had been played since 1892, one year after Naismith came up with the game for men. Women not only couldn’t vote back then, they were barely allowed to dribble.

A physical education instructor at Smith College named Senda Berenson feared the poor lasses would suffer “nervous fatigue.” So she wrote the rules for women’s basketball.

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There were three areas on the court and nine players. Players weren’t assigned to one area and not allowed to leave. They could dribble only three times, and there would be no trying to snatch the ball away.

Goodness, what would Berenson have thought if she walked into Thompson-Boling Arena during Summitt’s heyday? About 16,000 crazed fans watched as five Lady Vols ran all over the floor.

They scratched, yelled and risked being permanently disabled by nervous fatigue. On the sideline was a glaring figure with her arms crossed. Summitt was the face of women’s basketball.

Baseball would have been integrated without Jackie Robinson, but the process still needed a trailblazer worthy of the role. Similarly, women’s basketball would have exploded without Summitt being hired in 1974. What she did was epitomize the evolution.

Imagine a 22-year-old becoming head coach now at a school like Tennessee, and making $8,900 a year. Summitt drove the bus, did the team laundry and tried to wash antiquated thoughts out of her players’ heads.

Most played six-on-six basketball in high school. Three on offense; three on defense. They weren’t allowed to cross mid-court, since such full-court exertion was deemed too strenuous for girls.

Summitt, a six-on-six veteran, knew better. With Title IX kicking in, the rest of the world eventually caught up. But it wasn’t until 1982 that the NCAA sanctioned the sport for women. Summitt built the model every program aspired to be but few have matched.

It wasn’t just the 1,098 wins and eight NCAA titles, or all those sellouts and record crowds. It wasn’t just the fact Summitt became the first $1-millon women’s coach.

Men do that by the dozens. Only Tennessee has had 74 players and assistants go on to be coaches, spreading the Summitt gospel everywhere.

And every Summitt player who completed her eligibility got a degree. Even though women’s basketball doesn’t do one-and-dones, a 100-percent graduation rate over almost 40 years is beyond impressive.

As for scandal, the NCAA never had to worry about Knoxville.

“I loved being the head coach at Tennessee for 38 years,” Summitt said. “But I recognize that the time has come to move into the future and step into a new role.”